1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to biometrics.
2. Related Art
Biometrics are a group of technologies that provide a high level of security. Fingerprint capture and recognition is an important biometric technology. Law enforcement, banking, voting, and other industries increasingly rely upon fingerprints as a biometric to recognize or verify identity. See, Biometrics Explained, v. 2.0, G. Roethenbaugh, International Computer Society Assn. Carlisle, Pa. 1998, pages 1-34 (incorporated herein by reference in its entirety). Handheld, mobile print scanners have been used to capture a fingerprint. Such a print scanner can be held by an individual and carried around to allow fingerprint capture at a variety of locations. Conventional finger print scanners have been limited to fingerprint capture. Often times, captured prints were stored for later download. An official using such a handheld scanner may detect a print of another person, but could not readily verify the person's identity in real time. In those situations, prints were downloaded and transmitted to another device for extracting and matching processes.
Therefore, a handheld system is needed that allows a user to readily verify a person's identity in real-time without having to forward captured print information to a remote device for extract and match processing.